The thing about social media is that it allows people not only to glorify their lives, but has also allowed bullies to gain a power they did not have when they actually had to face the person they were bullying. There have been many cases of kids who have had their self-esteems shattered and have taken extreme measures such as suicide because of online bullying. You see when a bully bullies you in person it is an isolated incident that is only witnessed but a small amount of people. Give this bully internet access and his bullying can reach millions. What is even worse is that anything published in the internet lives on forever and ever.

A group of people who are constantly exposed to cyber bullying are celebrities. While being famous generally implies that your privacy can and will be violated often, that does not give insecure people with laptops, smartphones and Instagram accounts the right to post offensive shit left and right. Celebrity trainer Casey Ho, who’s youtube channel Blogilates who now counts with over two million subscribers decided to do a video in response to all the bullying she has had to endure in the past. This is what would happen if we actually paid attention to the ill words of these cowards:

Ladies and Gentlemen this is NO JOKE. Polaroid recently announced that it will be launching an “Instagram Camera” by 2014. What this camera will do is that it will take pictures, let you select your filter (as you already do through the app on your smartphone) and then it develops your picture instantly with the selected filter. Its a modern twist to your old-school polaroid camera.

Too bad it’s not coming out this year because this would absolutely be the graduation present I would want.

And on that note, as of today I am officially 30 days away from being an Emerson Alumni. But I mean who’s counting?

As the good old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” The phrase has saturated modern culture in all its trite glory. It was probably even Kodak’s slogan when it released the revolutionary waterproof film camera more than a decade ago.

But back then pictures actually had meaning, because the act of capture was selective and limited. Each camera, at most, had 40 photos — and there was the necessary trip to the drug store for development.

With the small sum of pictures available, every point and snap needed to be worth a thousand words, because they were authentic and representative. There were no “undo” or “delete” buttons, so thousands of exposures couldn’t be wasted on duck faces or selfies. Photos had meaning then.

They captured special memories, but today, the proliferation of cameras, and their social media counterparts, have flooded these special moments, and have catapulted every moment to the status of deserved documentation. This deluge has retracted from the inherent specialness of the moment and has proved detrimental to our society.

But those Kodak moments are beyond us and being in a photo during any occasion is easier than finding a slutoritiy girl to fuck on college campuses. The problem is not just in the multitude of these ridiculous photos, but that they might be the biggest liars our society faces beyond any political candidate.

Pictures lie a thousand words, it’s that simple. Firstly, in the deception of the aesthetic. It’s amazing how different someone can look when you put them through three different Instagram filters, sharpen the correct areas and add a drop shadow.

It can take a solid 5 and make everyone think that she is a 9. The rule of thumb: never trust how good a girl looks in pictures. Yet we fall for it, continuously, because we actually want to believe she is as hot as all her photos pretend she is.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times we have been disappointed in encountering a girl in real life, having been duped by how good a girl looks in photos. Sometimes I swear it must be a different person in her pictures, or her photographer must have been Terry Richardson’s brother. Photos deceive. Not just for women, but men as well, and I’m sure women go through the same struggle as we do. The deception is real.

Photos also lie about activity and social prowess. Between the nice cars we post on Instagram and pictures of us posing with a celebrity, we have skillfully discovered how to project a fantastic life unto our own.

The Ferrari might be from a car show, and you throwing a few empty bottles on your carpet might make it seem like you’re at the craziest party ever. But if you were really having that great of time, why are you so preoccupied with your Instagram?

The photos that we expose to the world tend to demonstrate an impressive lifestyle we more than likely don’t live. We deceive to impress others, to prove that life is good — or better than theirs. The only thing that matters is getting that double tap to send you beyond 11 likes into the digits range.

People have structured their lives around these photos, living through the gaps between the next possible upload, proving that they are doing something with their lives: be it a nightclub, skiing or simply cooking. Life becomes artificial: a day strung together by seven or so uploads.

But the biggest way these photos lie are in the emotions that they project. They wedge themselves in the disparity of how happy we are and how happy we appear. You see it all the time when two people break up and they go into a picture war of who can fake being the happiest best.

We parade a life of happiness and ease to all our friends, and this is when insecurity develops. People look at their lives and ask themselves why it doesn’t look as great as the some of the other people documenting the intricacies of their own. But it’s inherently false, all of it.

Photos have gone from capturing moments to remember and cherish to an all out competition of artifice and deception. And it’s a competition that no one can win. Our lives have followed suit, bathed in pretense. A photo used to be worth something, but its value is plummeting.

There are many adjectives used to describe generation Y. We are often called lazy, self-absorbed and accused of having the attention span of mosquitoes. However one phenomenon that is generally overlooked is our generation’s obsession with wealth and fame. Unlike our parents, generation Y never experienced any wars or economic depressions. Yes we have experienced “recessions” and threats of fiscal cliffs collapsing, but overall we all grew up in abundance and we have access to a lot more things than our ancestors had access to.

Our social circumstances have made us a generation who is extremely preoccupied with glamour, status and celebrity. Everything from the way we dress, to the way we socialize and even the way we are portrayed on television revolves around elitism, jet-setting and luxury goods. There are currently more high-end brands on the market than there are mainstream ones. Brands that sell handbags that cost more than a lot of people’s monthly rent, and yet have waitlists for the aforementioned bags. This means that these products are not only available, but people are willing to pay for them. We have also witnessed how regular everyday products such as sneakers and t-shirts- given that they have and expensive logo- have become luxury items that can cost us the same amount of dollars as an evening gown.

Luxury has infiltrated itself so much into our rhetoric that tv-shows like the 90’s sitcoms have become obsolete since our generation only wants to see tv-shows about people who live extraordinary experiences. This is why shows like Gossip Girl and Downtown Abbey, who have the two most expensive wardrobes on any television series, are so successful. They portray a certain lifestyle that us mere mortals will never have access to. This phenomenon has also contributed to the success of “it-girls” such as Olivia Palermo and Alexia Chung, who are not famous for their careers but for living a lifestyle that us common mortals can only aspire to. We admire glamorous lifestyles so much that people like Paris Hilton and the Kardashians have become the new celebrities even though they are not famous for doing anything in particular other than their last names. The worst part is that we choose to ignore the fact that their fortunes come from parents and grandparents who worked really hard and probably had humble beginnings.

Our generation gives high-end clothing brands and the status achieved through them such importance that some brands have seen themselves forced to magnify their logos in order to increase their sales. Our preoccupation with luxury experiences is what has made websites like Gilt and RueLaLa, who offer these experiences at discounted prices, so successful. Generation Y is always looking for front-row access, even if they don’t necessarily have the economic means to do so. Its hard to think of a way to overcome this phenomenon that has struck our generation, since we want the best of everything yet we don’t know how to work for it, and our sense of self-importance is only heightened by social media. Instagram and Facebook have served to create a carefully curated gallery of our fabulous lives. We live in a constant competition of who lives the most over-the-top experiences, and who is most “liked for it.”